THEORETICAL EVALUATION

Question 1(b) requires candidates to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows:
 Genre  Narrative  Representation  Audience     Media language 

In the examination, questions will be set using one of these concepts only.

  

 Representation

At AS, I made Zest, a comic film in the style of Bridget Jones, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging and PS I Love You. All these films have two things in common: they are films about 'rites of passage'

 

In our film, an Australian gap year student comes to work in Britain at a restaurant called Zest in the affluent and leafy Surrey suburbs where she is infuriated by the obstreperous customers and the eccentric, obsessive chef who models hi,self on Heston Blumenthal. 

  

I have chosen to analyse Zest as it offers many excellent examples of stereotypes as well as the protagonist who represents a Australian teenager and gap year student. Comic stereotyping is the key to understanding representation in our AS film because it uses stereotypes almost as a sitcom does to short cut to audience understanding: we sympathise with the young Australian Dani because of the customers that she has to handle. For example,